Saturday, April 29, 2017

Chop lots of onions and some green chillies. Boil and cube some potatoes separately. It's not absolutely necessary but you could take dalia and pressure cook with daal (like khichdi). Add some turmeric powder, salt, and chilli powder when you pressure cook. While that is cooking, in a separate pan, heat some oil or ghee. I personally love mustard oil but the taste is strong. You could try it if you like things pungent. When the oil is hot, add some cumin seeds, mustard seeds, chopped onions, dried red chillies, and green red chillies. Sautee until the onions start softening. Add the potatoes. Toss them about until they are coated with oil and start browning slightly. (I don't add tomatoes or peas but you could, if you wanted. What does taste really good are soya chunks. Soak them a few minutes before in hot, salted water for 10 minutes or so. Add them to the mix and cook them.) There is a meat masala (it's all vegetarian but it used for meat preps) that I also use. You could try with pavbhaji or some kind of biryani masala if you like. Add the daal and daliakhichdi to this. Sprinkle some water as you cook in case the dish is going dry. Taste to see that the masala has spread evenly. Cover and cook for some time. Eat with curd and pickle. You could drizzle some ghee or butter also.

Other things that happened:

There is a FB page that I am part of - Pune Eat Outs. I made a comment on there - and it was a fairly innocent one, I think - on the trend of food reviews being fairly descriptive. It's an interesting trend. My comment was something along the lines of how all food reviews are now written like drama - it actually has a 3 act structure! Anyway, I think the admin guy didn't like it. For some reason, with a deluge of smileys, he insinuated that I was getting a lot of 'footage' on his page, and how he thinks I have now gotten enough coverage to get writing jobs - or something like that. It's funny when admins start getting touchy about their own pages. But actually - no not funny, I suppose it's natural. I was working some time back with someone else who was putting up posts for his workshop but he got some negative reviews and then he blocked the person or something like that. Online is a fascinating place. Rejection is sensed and responded to in so many different ways. What I don't quite get is the use of smileys through clenched teeth. In fact, there should be a smiley like that - the tight smiley - where you don't really want to smile but you have to because you want to show nonchalance and the ability to take the high-road.

A friend of mine is in Paris. She shared some pictures of the paintings that she saw in the Louvre. Stunning they are. I love, love, love the way the shadows and soft pools of light have been painted around the human figures. Maybe those painters had their squabbles also. Terse disagreements with strangers. Snarky attacks from the offended. But they went and painted. This is why I think art will save the world.It is the only thing innocent and strong and random and cheeky enough to pull you into an everyday nobility.

I want roads to move and twist and become grey hairs on my head. My thoughts will be potholes or cars or shrubs tough enough o grow through pavements. I wonder if my birthday will come again. I mean I know it will come but sometimes I imagine my birthday to be upholstered on a rocking chair and I can sit and rock myself to that specific day any time. I am in Bombay and I generally work near the kitchen. But the light bothers my mummy. So today I am sitting and working in the library on the ground floor. I had bought Tamerlane by Justin Marozzi. But then inexplicably it got misplaced. I searched every where - nearly ten times! Today I sat in the library and was led to open the book case in front of me. Tamerlane was there.

Friday, April 28, 2017

I am quite excited and exhausted in equal parts. This post is going to be a dump of whatever is going on in my head right now. It is 1:54 a.m and I will write until it is 2:15. Post 2:15 I will go back to do some work and then I will go and make coffee and then I will have coffee and work some more. Some days when I get out of the house, I want the world to be purple. Lavender? Lilac? Mauve? Some shade of purple. Papery and purple to be exact. There are these pictures that I see trending on the internet - facebook really - of lots of shaded avenues with beautiful, purple flowers and gorgeous, pretty trees! Loads of sweet stuff and candies. I have a craving for kaju katli. Is it katli or katri? It has been so long that I have forgotten. It is a gorgeous piece of sweet! Those diamond-shaped mouldings of ground cashew, sugar, and flour and the vark film on it -so tasty! I also am thinking of some other sweet thing. The other day I ate a Danish pastry at 18 degrees. It was chewy and nice. I am not sure if a Danish is supposed to be chewy but I was eating a baked treat after very, very long. And hey! Wouldn't it be nice to work on something gorgeous and elaborate? Like making barfis? Barfi! See, the name came to me when I was thinking about whether t is katri or katli. You know what I want to do? I want to actually just go to the Himalayas for an extended period of time. It is amazing just how much overwhelm I am tackling right now. When people say, you have to take it one day at a time - it is not good advice. It is the ONLY advice. You cannot do anything but. I think somewhere in the sky, there is a giant block of eternity that is getting shaved and grated and it is falling into all of our lives as times. Pieces of days, slivers of hours, projects to complete. Voidness is sweet. It would be nice to get done with all kinds of time-related stuff and just have little bubbles of void. What would bubbles of void look like? Purple, I think. I also like yellow. I find it cheery. When you break an egg and the yellow yolk pours out of it like a song, song of the sun, it feels good. Such a tasty, yummy mode of happiness to be conveyed. In fact, as much as I find a yolk cheery and pretty, I also think it is quite a mysterious puddle of gook. I am consuming a destiny of sorts, am I not, when I eat an egg? Whatever that chicken could have become? Maybe that is a good way to spur oneself on. Eat egg and then work really hard because you don't just have your own potential to live up to but also the chicken. I think I have become a kinder person. Here are some traits that I really admire about people: generosity, patience, kindness, loyalty, and a sense of play. Women are nice, you know. Sometimes when you ask a person about the way they want to die, women usually answer quickly, thoughtfully. They are not guarded. Men usually are. Sometimes in my dreams I see a deep, red wound. At first I used to be really scared of it but then I decided not to be. I feel myself tensing when I see it but I continue to keep my eyes shut and breathe through that pain. In my mind's eye, I feel the wound feel tender around the edges. But then, the other dayy, I got some form of strength when I plunged a finger inside and rooted out a tangled piece of stinking root/ nerve sort of thing. It looked like a root. I do not like lizards. I especially don't like the ones that have mottled skin. Today my landlord said that I have not paid up for one mnth. That is not possible. I have to check with the bank tomorrow. It is so exhausting keeping pace with all these things. There is a cheque that I really wanted cleared this month but I think it will be cleared next month. I like making plans on Facebook with friends to have coffee with. Is that sentence structure correct? Maybe, maybe not. It is harsh. People are good. I think overall people are good. On one of my tabs that is open, there is an article on Seneca;s Stoic philosophy. I should have read that instead of writing this. No. It is good to write. It is very good to write. When people don't write, how do they cope? I want to write a book. I was thinking that soon enough, I will start writing a book. After October. One more minute to go. I don't know how many seconds. It feels good to write. It feels good to get empty. This feels like the last leg of something. I want new, fresh things. Beautiful, pretty things that are purple.